There was a change made recently in the first-post approval process, which has let more spam bots into the forum. Moderators are aware of the spam issue, but we have to delete the posts one-by-one, which isn't really feasible when there are 1000+ topics.

I've contacted the OpenCart forum support person and Daniel about this issue, so hopefully they'll get it sorted soon. Your patience is appreciated in the meantime. No need to report posts at this point --- I'm compiling a list of the spam bot users, so their posts will get mass-deleted as soon as a forum admin does the task.

You're losing the battle. Every day new Chinee spammers drop several hundred spams. One this morning racked up 734 offers to sell college degrees! Get better forum software if you want to keep ahead of them. Almost anything is better than phpBB. At least, roll back the latest changes that opened the floodgates.

This must be Daniel and company's number one priority. Ahead of OC bug fixes, ahead of new OC development, ahead of their day jobs, ahead of everything else, or all is lost. Do they need volunteer moderators to go in and ban spammers and erase hundreds of spams? If there are enough of us, it should go quickly.

Even if dozens of people were deleting thousands of topics every day, that's not very efficient.

I think Daniel has found the forums that had the first-post approval turned off, so he's re-enabling that. That should stop the flood, and hopefully one of them will mass-delete the spam posts in the next few days.

Why do spam posts have to be deleted manually? There's GOT to be a way to do a search for "huyuiyu" (current A-hole filling up the boards) and batch-delete all posts by that user. And then ban that user by IP.

You'd think that, but there's not. We used to have a one-click ban function, but when the forum was updated to a newer phpBB version, that functionality was lost (and the plugin author hasn't updated it, so it's not usable). Forum admins can mass-delete posts by a user, but moderators have to do it one-by-one.

Daniel seems to have fixed the mass-postings, so if you see a *new* spam topic please report it. There are still a few users with mass-spam posts, which one of the OpenCart team should delete when they get time. If they don't, I'll be deleting some posts every day, so I'll get to them all eventually.

You'd think that, but there's not. We used to have a one-click ban function, but when the forum was updated to a newer phpBB version, that functionality was lost (and the plugin author hasn't updated it, so it's not usable). Forum admins can mass-delete posts by a user, but moderators have to do it one-by-one.

Yeah, it's not unreasonable to keep the H-bombs out of the hands of mere moderators, and only let admins (usually more trusted) be able to wreak such havoc. So, do the admins see the spam reports and are they authorized to quickly act to ban users and vaporize all their posts? When I submit a report that such-and-such posting is just the tip of a 700 spam iceberg, can I count on an admin getting on the case quickly? There seems to have been an awfully long delay between the first reports of trouble and the final cleanup. It appears that word spreads quickly in the spam world about which forums aggressively wipe out spammers, and which don't (i.e., are worth spamming). You can't wait to start bailing out the water until the hole in the boat has been plugged -- you'll sink first.

I agree that there was too long of a delay on handling the situation this time, but I think part of it was researching which settings were causing the spam to be allowed, and how to fix those. There shouldn't be any more mass-spam posts.

If you do report spam posts, moderators should handle it within 24 hours, but forum admins don't check the reports every day (since that's the job of moderators). If there is another mass-post, I'll alert a forum admin and they can handle it, but it may take longer than 24 hours since every is in different time zones (and checks the forum at different times).

I just report two new chinee spammers, each with over 200 posts. Somebody at OC isn't aggressively keeping up with this crap! This forum apparently has developed a reputation as easy-to-spam, and these are the consequences when things are allowed to slide.

Yes, I'm trying to sort it out with the forum admins. I think there are a few sub-forums that don't have the first post approval setting right, which is why those forums can get spam posted, but others can't. It should hopefully be sorted soon.

(I keep asking them to make me an admin so I can do it myself, but so far it's not working.)

So part of the partnership requirements say we need to be continually active in forums. But the forums have been flooded with spam for month(s).

Why are you are not throttling posts? People shouldn't be allowed to post 3+ new topics a minute like you are letting them do. Also, they shouldn't be allowed to post a topic that is identical to their last. That would knock down 80% of it right there, at least making the forum useable again......

Additionally, there is no honeypot field on the login page. This is a hidden field that automatically rejects and temporarily bans the login if automation fills in this field. Many bots will fill it in resulting in a much higher success rate. What are you doing to combat this at login?

Manually trying to delete posts like these is a losing battle. Use regex heuristics to block them at POST and more specific heuristics to delete them en mass. They are basically all the same right?

I am confused as to why people who develop a massively popular ecom solution arent able to combat simple forum spam.

All good suggestions. However, this wasn't really an issue until last month, when some forum settings changed. Hopefully this incident will convince the OpenCart team that they need to figure out what they did and how to stop it (and adding a few more restrictions in place like you suggest would always help, as well).

I've notified Daniel and the forum support person about the new spam, so hopefully they can do something about it soon.

Well, a week ago or so, Daniel told us here, that someone would take care about
this place. It just leaves a very bad impression, if someone does not even seem to
be able, to keep a forum in working condition, if 'honest' people come here, eager
to find out more about OC, and then be confronted with this mess. And for existing
Forum Users, it's sure not helpful, and it does not add to motivation, to spend much
time around here, under the circumstances, as they exist, for some time already ...
Ernie